How To Perform Well So That Other People Will Enjoy It More
As a performer, there’s nothing more disheartening than performing a song that you’ve worked so hard on, only to have your audience look bored when you perform.
Why is it when some people perform the audience has a great time, and other times the audience just isn’t “into it”?
Let’s look at a couple of things you can do while performing that will help to capture your audience’s attention and help you to have better performances.
When you have good eye contact with your audience, this will help them to feel more engaged. Most performers who first start out will spend more time looking at their guitar or at the floor. This makes you look nervous.
This doesn’t mean you have to have a staring contest with one person in the front row, but a good rule of thumb is to spend about 80% of performance looking at the audience, 20% looking at your guitar.
When you see great performers, you’ll notice they always have a unique way of introducing songs. Now they have the added benefit where the audience knows the songs but for you, this may not be the case. A nice little phrase you can use is the following:
“Hi everyone, I’m Dan! I’m going to place a little song for you called XXX. I really think you’re going to enjoy it, thanks for listening.”
Try to create extra tension in your music and make it more emotive by using dynamics.
For some example, you could start the song by playing it quietly, but then when it gets to the chorus, really increase the volume of your strumming and or singing to make it more powerful. And then decrease the dynamics again.
This really helps to add more drama and tension to the whole performance and make it a lot more interesting to the audience. Rather than having the whole song at the same volume all the way through.
Along with dynamics, another way you can add interest to your performance is move around on stage. Whether you have actual stage moves, just moving to the front of the stage, pounding your feet loudly, going to different places on stage (or even your living room), and really interacting with the audience in a way can really help make your performance more engaging.
There are many ways to improve your performing skills, these are a few to get started with. Now, these skills by themselves will not be enough to transform from the nervous teenager, to a “rockstar” but with consistent training it is possible give performances that other people genuinely enjoy.
If you’d like more help with your performing, or how to get started, find a great guitar teacher who can help you.
About author:
Guitar Tuition East London is a guitar school based in Stratford, East London, England that teaches students of all ages who are passionate about playing electric & acoustic guitar. With lots of extracurricular activities, they are able to help their students become great guitar players and confident musicians as well. If you are based in that area and interested in taking acoustic guitar lessons then get in contact.
(585) 298-6511